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Old 10-27-2016, 05:05 PM #1
Challoran Challoran is offline
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Challoran Challoran is offline
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Default Neurological/Psychological Mystery

Neurological/Psychological Mystery

I’m hoping that someone can shed some light on something that happened to me some years ago and has troubled me ever since. I’ll call it an “event.”

At the time, I thought it was the result of some kind of rare food poisoning. Or perhaps somebody slipped a drug into my food or drink. Mostly I thought that I had simply “lost my mind.” Only recently have I begun to wonder whether I was suffering some kind of neurological or psychological episode.

Here are the facts:

In 2002, my ex-husband and I, both journalists, were living and working in a country in the Persian Gulf, and had been there for nearly five years. There were stresses in the marriage but these were compensated by an enjoyable job, financial comfort and a good network of women friends.

I taught journalism in the mornings and read news at a local English language radio station in the afternoon. On the day in question, I left work at about six, tired, but no more than usual.

I knew the housemaid would have fed the children early, so I stopped by the bakery to pick up a “treat” for myself: A lovely little steak and kidney pie (there were so many British expatriates in this country that British cuisine was common).

I came home and heated up the pie; it was probably getting on eight before I actually sat down to eat.

My husband returned from work at ten. I poured us glasses of wine and we sat down on the sofa together to talk. Then it happened:

One minute I was talking normally; the next, I had my head in my hands and was telling my husband, “My God, I’ve never felt like this in my life.” I remember I said it over and over again, and my husband, normally a bit chilly, was genuinely scared for me.

What I was feeling is what I can only describe as extreme sensory overload, as if sight and hearing were amplified to an unbearable level.

Normally, for example, our brains allow us to shut out some sounds, like the low-pitch hum of electronics or the sound of a car passing or a dog barking in the street, and let us concentrate instead on someone talking to us or the voice of the TV moderator. But imagine that in an instant, all those sounds were to hit you at once, with equal, glaring intensity. Imagine that your brain placed as much value on the dog’s bark as the sound of your refrigerator’s hum and your husband’s voice. You’d be overcome!

Now imagine that it wasn’t just sound impacting me. Imagine that suddenly, the light became blindingly intense, as the colors of the paintings on the walls and everything else in my sight. I couldn’t process it all. It was a full-on assault, and I had to shut my eyes.

And that all my other senses went into hyper-drive.

In short, it was overwhelming—no, beyond that—excruciating, torturous.

My husband, clucking and worried and hovering beside me, just added to the assault on my senses, and I insisted that he just help me upstairs to bed where, if the “event” wasn’t going to stop, at least I could lie under a dark blanket in a dark room and try to cut out all of the sensory stimuli. I told my husband, the kids, the housemaid, to stay away, just let me lie in the dark and I’d be fine in the morning.

Alone, buried in covers so I couldn’t see anything, a pillow over my head so I couldn’t hear anything, my brain felt as if it might explode. Even the sound of my own breathing, my heart beating, was torture.

I fought to gain some sense of control, and focused on some tiny, still-normal place inside my head, and tried to calm myself.

Logic took hold: I rationalized to myself that I was (a) either having a nervous breakdown or (b) I had eaten something bad, i.e., maybe like that case in France in the 1950s where an entire village went mad after eating bread made from rye that had been contaminated by ergot fungus, or (c) this was a flashback from that one time in 1970 when my boyfriend had talked me into taking mescaline and for 12 hours, I had to focus really hard on acting normal so my mother wouldn’t find out, or (d) one of the disc jockeys at the radio where I worked had slipped something into my drink or food at lunchtime; all the DJ’s played gigs at nightclubs in the evenings, and there was apparently a lively club and drug scene.

I told myself that a good night’s sleep would make everything better. And then I fell asleep. Maybe I even prayed myself to sleep. Please God, don’t let me be going crazy.

The next morning, the symptoms were still there.

My husband, who slept in another room that night, was more alarmed in the morning, and insisted on taking me to the hospital.

I resisted. I didn’t want to leave the shelter of my bed. I didn’t want to face the daylight or the sounds of traffic or the bumpiness of the drive.

But I gave in. The first hospital we went to wouldn’t treat me because I wasn’t a “local” resident. So we were forced to drive to a public hospital downtown. I kept my eyes shut the whole time, trying to block the light.

We finally arrived at the second hospital, which being a public hospital, was grim and chaotic. When I was finally seen, they gave me an EKG to rule out a heart attack. I insisted they were wasting their time, convinced I was having a nervous breakdown, and asked them to take me to the psychiatric ward. They did not.

The next stop was neurology, where a kindly doctor gave me the neurological once-over: I touched my nose with my fingertips. My legs kicked when he tapped at my knees with the rubber hammer. I followed the flashlight’s beam with my eyes. Everything seemed to be in working order, so he said he wanted me to get a CT scan.

By now, I’d been in the hospital for hours, with long waits in crowded, dingy waiting rooms between each consultation. Needless to say, with sights, sounds and smells blasting at my senses, I found myself completely overwhelmed and longing for the darkness of my bedroom, which I thought was the only escape.

But I pressed on. When we got down to the radiology department, I was given a questionnaire to fill out. They asked me if I had any metal in my body. I said yes, and explained I had pins in an ankle I’d broken years earlier and metal in both hips, after two hip replacements (osteoarthritis).

And so they said they could not give me a scan. Looking back, I fail to see how metal in my lower extremities could have interfered with a scan of my head, but I was in no mood to question anything. I could only think of my bed.

No one suggested a blood test, and I didn’t insist on one because in that particular country, having drugs in your system could land you straightaway in jail. And besides, what would they find? I was going crazy, pure and simple.

And so I ordered my husband to drive me home, where I promptly went to bed and stayed there for three more days and two more nights. My symptoms improved slightly the third day and, when I woke up on the fourth day, they were magically gone.

This experience helped me make a decision I’d been putting off for long months. I decided I wanted to separate from my husband. Eight weeks later, left the country and returned with my three children to the U.S. I only told a few people about the incident, and never brought it up with my doctor because I was convinced I was crazy and that the whole thing was some sort of temporary psychotic breakdown.

Sometimes I wondered if I had indeed been drugged, but going over the timeline of the day’s events, it didn’t make sense. If a DJ had slipped ecstasy or some similar drug in large amounts into my diet Coke at lunchtime, surely the effects would have shown up before ten pm.

And what were the chances that the baker had put something in my steak and kidney pie?

In the years since, I’ve often wondered why I was so intent on it being a psychiatric event. In point of fact, I’m not crazy. I’m a normal middle-aged woman who has managed to handle a demanding career, children, life overseas and divorce without hearing voices or seeing things. In short, I’m as sane as the next person.

So, what then happened to me?

Was it a form of stroke or some other neurological event that could someday strike again?

Was it a brief psychotic breakdown of some kind, owing to the stress of being in an unhappy marriage far from home?

Was it that mescaline hit at age 17 – and could it “hit” again?

I apologize for the length of this narrative, but I don’t want spare any details.

Can anyone help shed light on this mystery that continues to trouble me?
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Old 10-28-2016, 01:40 PM #2
Skeezyks Skeezyks is offline
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Hello Challoran: I'm sorry I cannot offer any useful insights into what happened to you. Personally this does not sound like a psychological or psychiatric event to me. But I'm not a mental health professional. I also don't know what else it could have been. I guess the good thing is that, once it was over, it was over... hopefully never to return!

I see this is your first post here on NeuroTalk. So I'd like to welcome you to NT. I hope you find whatever amount of time you spend here to be of benefit.
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Old 10-28-2016, 06:46 PM #3
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Hi Challoran

Welcome to NeuroTalk.

Have you experienced anything more recently which is similar to what happened to you in 2002? If so, it might be worth getting a full medical investigation.

As far as what you experienced in 2002, it is very hard to say what was going on. Possibly it was a combination of things; maybe a combination of something you ate, an acute illness and stress associated with your relationship with your then-husband?

All the best.
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